The performance bonus

I don't write anymore. I don't know why. Maybe it is because nobody comes to this site anymore, except for Japanese spammers who fill my comments with characters I cannot understand. I don't think it really matters what I say, which paradoxically, gives me the freedom to say what I want.

I'm sad and frustrated today. The performance bonus is out. Personally, I'm happy because I got an unexpected sum of money that I can use to buy recliners for my parents, bright happy blue shoes for myself, a present for my -f. On the other hand, I'm upset because just as I got a good bonus, others got nothing at all. It's a double-edged sword. The deal is this: half will receive more than the normative bonus, half will receive less. Is the encouragement to the top half worth the discouragement faced by the bottom? It makes sense if the bottom half are all taking it easy on purpose because they value a proper work-life balance, but what gets to me is that the assessment system is not as fair or impartial as it makes itself out to be. What happens when the management chooses to see you in a particular light, refusing to see the effort you have put it, the improvements you have made, and the strengths that you have? What if the management chooses to nitpick, because after all, someone has to be that sacrificial one to have that failing grade? It upsets me, and I want vindication for a friend of mine.

I don't really know why some people have it easier than others. All my life I've been blessed. It's as if someone is paving the way in front of me, as if God is unreservedly pouring his blessings in my life. I did nothing to deserve this. Sometimes I worry that something terrible is going to happen because nobody deserves to be this blessed; yet, I always quickly think: No. It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God's grace (and perhaps my parents' faith), so why shouldn't his blessings be full, unreserved, overflowing, undeserved?

So I got a performance bonus. But what I have performed, and curiously, who am I performing for? All I have done is what is to be expected of a teacher; all my friend has done is the same, but she got no bonus. What is it they are rewarding? Calibre? Favor? Certainly, not attitude nor results because she has both. It is befuddling. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I think it is important to look back at all our "performance"—all our efforts and achievements, and to say—it is simply our duty, and then to remember that we don't perform for our bosses or for our bonuses, but for the Most High God from whom all blessings flow, including the unspeakable blessing of the life and breath in our bones. Then, I think, we would do him proud.

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An apple in the hand

It's Friday. I just got done with the last class of my day. I'm happy and I'm tired and I'm frazzled and I'm spent. The long days in school are wearing me down. It's awful. I feel like I don't have time to think.

Yet, I'm happy. Last night I thought that happiness felt like holding an apple in the hand. It seems a somewhat oddball thing to say now, yet last night, it felt true. The feeling of the apple in the hand encapsulates my happiness.

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When Joshua left

When Joshua left, I wept. I went for a long run, paused on top of a flyover overlooking a busy expressway, and cried for a while.

I knew that his leaving meant that one possibility for my future would be forever closed: the socially-accepted, God-blessed option. He was someone really special to me — I had loved and admired him in way that I knew would never be repeated again with another boy and I was disappointed that I couldn't make both of us happy.

I met up with him this weekend. He looks the same. At some fundamental level, I still love him to bits. I hear from Ming that he bought a ring this trip to propose to his gf, and my heart twinges slightly with envy, but it is quickly taken over with gratitude and peace because he is finally happy. And I am happy too, because I finally have the guts to accept who and what I am.

So I must love from a quiet distance. Maybe in two or three years' time when there's a baby in tow and I have finally met his gf/ wife, I can be his sister again. Or maybe not. But it doesn't matter.

To love is a gift.

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Sex, flirting and teaching

I just watched "The History Boys". Remarkably, it was inspiring and shockingly erotic at the same time. Do the two go together? Is teaching the pushing of new boundaries, just as making out the exploring of territory? It was flirting by metaphors and the stunning use of language, poetry and dialogue played havoc on the mind, even as the action on the screen was decidedly NC(16).

I want to be like both Hector and Irwin. I want to recite poetry; I want to make them think. Yet I have Irwin's timidity and Hector's unfocused—that's a compound noun, like uncoffined, unkissed, unrejoicing, unconfessed, unembraced—wanderings. I want to know, beyond the learning objectives and the grammatical objects, exactly what I want to teach.

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1126.

The power to make decisions is not as important as the power to influence. Why do people get so heady over the first?

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